1. Technical Field
This invention is directed toward a system and process for digital image processing. More particularly, the invention is directed toward an efficient method for editing multiple images to create a composite image.
2. Background Art
Digital cameras are becoming popular and their sales have increased rapidly in recent years. Since digital cameras have become so popular, there has been an increased desire to share the photos taken with these cameras between family members, friends and coworkers. Business use of these images has also increased dramatically. Digital images are frequently used in marketing materials, technical papers, reports and Internet websites.
An aspect of digital image sharing is the quality of the images shared and used in various applications. People often seek to improve images themselves or collaboratively with others. Image-editing software, that improves the quality of digital images, has therefore also become quite popular. In a traditional darkroom, image quality is controlled with choices of films, chemicals, papers and processes. In the digital equivalent of the darkroom, images are edited with a computer system and a photo-editing program. Just as in a traditional darkroom, the quality of the digital tools has an impact on the quality of the images achieved. Digital images can be edited in a wide variety of ways using photo-editing software. In some cases an editing program is used to improve an image by eliminating or reducing its flaws. For example, some conventional photo-editing operations that improve a digital image include: cropping, adjusting brightness and contrast, correcting color balance, adjusting color saturation, filtering, converting color images to black and white, hand coloring black and white photos, eliminating red eye, and resizing an image to different resolutions.
Other methods of editing digital images include creating special effects such as, for example, using multiple or timed exposures, overlaying images of different subject matter, adding color to or tinting black and white images, creating a vignette (soft fade) effect, and so on.
One important aspect of digital photography is capturing images of a group of people, such as, for example, a family photo or an image of a sports team. Taking group photographs can be frustrating because capturing a single image in which everyone is smiling and has their eyes open is nearly impossible. Most photographers take a series of photographs hoping to capture at least one satisfactory image of the group. However, this approach may never yield such an image. On the other hand, within the series of images, it is likely that at least one good image of each individual within the group will be captured. To resolve such a problem, it would be ideal to create a group photograph by combining the best portions of a series of individual images into a single composite image that incorporates the best view of each person in the group.